


The Time Traveler's Rick

by kendianna



Category: Rick and Morty, The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Citadel of Ricks, Codependency, Growing Up, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, The Flesh Curtains, Time Travel, Wedding Squanchers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 15:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5830855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kendianna/pseuds/kendianna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every Morty he's met, whether they'll admit to it or not, is convinced that their Rick is the one wildcard that breaks the mold. The only difference between him and them is that when he says it he's telling the truth. His Rick really is something special, and he is too.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>(Rick has an innate ability to spontaneously travel through time and space. Morty has known Rick his whole life because versions of Rick from different times have all visited him.)</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Time Traveler's Rick

**Author's Note:**

> At least knowing the plot to the Time Traveler's wife helps, if you don't know then the description of the fic tells you all you need to know. There's nothing to really spoil for the fic since it's such a popular trope.

 

 **Morty is a baby and all he knows is that someone is holding him, loving him  
** **Rick is somewhere in his early forties, and he is so unbelievably happy**

 

Morty is upright on a knee, being gently bounced up and down. Strong and steady hands are wrapped around his chubby tummy. He's in a house that's more like a nest, with wide open windows that let sunlight pour in. There's a light blanket draped around him, and it's soft and downy and feather light.

A giant man with a beak and wings is tickling his chin and petting his hair. When the man speaks it sounds the way the wind feels against his face. The man had tried to feed him bugs earlier, and Morty is still a little apprehensive. A funny cat is shaking a hollow walnut shell with something rattling inside back and forth in front of his face.

Morty will never know, or understand, or even remember, but his grandpa laughs with love in his voice. There's something warm in his eyes that even his best friends have never seen there before. "I think I'm, I'm ruuurgh-really gonna try and stick around for this one"

 

_______________

 

 **Morty is five years old and he doesn't particularly like what he's hearing**  
**Rick looks closer to ninety than eighty, and he is exhausted.**

 

Morty is sitting at the table like he's part of the conversation, but big words and loud voices are bandying over his head. He isn't sure who's winning the argument, but past experience tells him it's probably not his dad. He knows this much; his parents want him to go to school, and his grandpa doesn't.

There are accusations from his parents that the Rick they're talking to isn't even the one from this time, and he doesn't deny it. He tells them that he knows Morty is gonna have a hard time in school, that he's never going to be better than mediocre if he's stifled now by the education system, that he can teach Morty so much more than any idiot with a k12 endorsement.

His parents are divided. His mom will always take grandpa's side, and his dad will always argue that they're ganging up on him. He's not wrong. There's something fragile in mom, and when grandpa gets upset it looks close to breaking. He doesn't really understand, because grandpa's always been around. It's not like he's going to leave.

 

_______________

 

 **Morty is eight and he's at the biggest arcade in the entire universe**  
**Rick is so young, it's almost like he's another person**

 

Morty is totally physically and mentally overstimulated and he loves it. Rick hacked the Roy machine so they could campaign it together on multiplayer. He's heard that some people play it and actually live a normal life, but he can't imagine for a second why you'd want to. He hears the aliens watching their game on the projection screen mumble something about how you're not supposed to be able to do a no-mercy-run on Roy, and they get kicked off of it.

He has no idea how long they've been here, but he's played every game on the first two floors, and he's almost got enough tickets to get a little fuzzy blue thing that sort of looks like a puppy. It has perky ears and everything. He knows his parents won't let him keep it, but maybe Rick can make something up about responsibility and character development. His parents still seem to think he's irredeemably and unfixably stupid, and his mom eats that shit up.

He and Rick had something bright pink that came in a cone for lunch. It had been gooey and crunchy at the same time, and it tasted like the one time he put a battery in his mouth. It zapped a little at his insides as it went down, and he could still feel it moving around in his tummy. Rick had laughed his old man chortle, and said to get used to it, because it was was basically the pizza of space cuisine. 

 

_______________

 

   
So maybe he was wrong. Grandpa does leave a lot. He's never usually gone for very long, but anyone who's been on an adventure or errand with him knows that can change at the drop of a hat. Sometimes something as simple as a trip out to drop his dad off at Jerryboree can become a crusade against the federation. Things happen. Things get complicated.

Morty understands the look of calm terror on mom's face now every time they get in the flying saucer. Never knowing when someone is going to be there for you and when they aren't is worse than total abandonment. It's certainly crueler.

 

_______________

 

  
**Morty is ten years old and he's attending a funeral**  
**Rick is...well there are two right now**

 

Morty is only sort of attending a funeral. It's more like a pre-memorial, but no one really knows what to call it, so for now it's a funeral. He's not really sure how to feel. Honestly, he'd rather be at home watching Ball Fondlers. But his mother had not stopped weeping openly since it had happened, and was taking this very hard. She was the one who had insisted on a ceremony. On at least something.

It's not like his grandpa is gone forever, he just saw him this afternoon. In fact, his grandpa is here, disguised, all the way in the back row of his own funeral. Which is why he's a little confused. He knows he saw grandpa die, they all did. That's why they're here right now. But he's seen a lot of things. The grandpa he saw die was older. A lot older. It could have been years from now that it happens. That it will happen. Again.

Morty wonders if they'll have a second funeral when it happens the second time around.

 

 _______________

 

 He doesn't understand why the other Morties are so desperate for their Rick's approval. They put on false bravado and act jaded towards the wonders of the universe because they think it will impress their Rick. They think that if they can be just aloof enough, if they can drop just the right technical jargon, if they can pull off just the right reckless death-defying move, then maybe their Rick will finally respect them.

The other Morties let their Ricks walk all over them. They smuggle drugs and other contraband up their asses for their Ricks. They look the other way while their Ricks sell guns to killers. They let themselves be dragged along on Rick's intergalactic booty calls to Unity's hive assimilated planets. Rick tells them to jump and they whip out a trampoline.

They have no idea how fake Rick is. They have fundamental misunderstandings about his character. Rick is an alcoholic living through the longest running depressive episode in recorded history. He's an emotionally needy trainwreck and they'll never realize it, because they'll never be as good an actor as he is. He's not a god and he's not infallible. He doesn't have all the answers and he isn't always right. When he fucks up, he fucks up spectacularly.

 

_______________

 

 **Morty is fourteen and he's never been more terrified in his life**  
**Rick is probably in his sixties, and he's never been drunker**

  
On the day that the galactic federation finally find them, Morty expects his grandpa to go down fighting, in some sort of blaze of rebellious glory. They've killed his best friend and chased him half way across the universe. For a grudge bearing alcoholic, those are fighting words. Clearly the grompflomite guards are also expecting a firefight, because they've brought an entire battalion of their highest ranking soldiers, armed to the teeth and packing enough heat to blow the tiny planet they're on to smithereens.

Morty should have known Rick would surprise him. He always does.

Before they even have a chance to demand his surrender, Rick is leaving the little cabin with his hands over his head. He's laughing wild and dangerous like he's snapped, and it's sending a shiver of fear and arousal up Morty's spine. This is so fucked up.

The guards splinter apart, some rushing Rick and dragging him towards their ship, and some cautiously approaching the Smiths, bug eyes wide and hands held out neutrally, as if trying to avoid spooking a cat. Over their warbling alien language, Morty heard Rick shouting "I-IeeeEEurp-I'll be back b-before, before dinner. Th-th-there isn't, there isn't a prison in this universe that can, that c-c-can hold yeeeuuurrggh, your grandpa"

While his dad is busy insisting they were all held hostage, the federation soldiers are already gently pushing them onto the larger and altogether more diplomatic looking ships. It's not until they're brought into a plain and utilitarian guest suite do they realize how big this is. What's happening around them and what's changed at home in their absence.

There's a tv with interdimensional cable, and it's showing them news feed. It's been less than a week and aliens have already integrated into the social structure of earth.

By the time they get back to earth, they're entered into the federal citizenship databank system. They're scanned and processed and assigned jobs. When they get home Rick is waiting for them at the kitchen table like he said he'd be, fiddling around with upgrading the AI for the butter robot and naked as the day he was born.

 

_______________

 

 **Morty is sixteen and he's really trying to get drunk**  
**Rick is...Morty doesn't even know where he is now let alone how old he is**

  
Morty is in the citadel with big group of his favorite Morties. They're drinking heavily, and talking about their travels and adventures. Most of the other Morties think he's either bragging or exaggerating, because no Morty registered to a council member has been with their Rick for longer than a few years, tops. None of them have really had a life with their grandpa the way he has. They don't think they're anything special without him, that their worth is relational to their place in his life.

He knows there are other Ricks and Morties that don't exactly fit the mold either, but he isn't sure if it's even safe to let anyone else know just how different they are. Just how special him and his Rick are. No other Morty has his own portal gun. No other Morty would come here on his own.

He really feels for himself. Not him specifically, but his other selves. None of the other Ricks will ever be as wild as his, but most of them have already crossed wedding gate. It's a quantum event apparently, and all of them will have to go through it at some point.

What was a rough two weeks for him is the single worst experience of most of these Morties lives. Some of them will never get their Rick back. Some are still grieving. Some of them watched their Rick die, and some of them watched their Rick betray the entire Smith family. He doesn't think he can ever let them know just how fast and how easy it passed for him.

He feels especially bad for c-137 Morty, but also a little jealous. C-137 Rick is a crazy asshole, and a wildcard. He gave himself up to the federation too, but at least he did it out of love. That Rick didn't even have a get-out-of-jail-free card like his did. He made a decision and he had to live with the consequences. Morty sometimes wonders if his Rick would have done the same thing if he wasn't the way he was. If he still would have given himself up for them. For him.

_______________

 

 **Morty is seventeen and something incredible is happening to him**  
**Rick is in his fifties, but he's about to be in his late twenties**

  
Rick insists that he started Traveling as early as age ten, but Morty thinks it's bullshit. He's a teenager and he's only done it once before and that was just in the last month. It was rocky, and he had approximately zero control, but it was the most incredible experience of his life.

One second he was on the couch in his underwear watching the Two Brothers marathon, the next he was on all fours in a sea of people in the dark. No, it wasn't totally dark, there were harsh green and blue lights strobing in beams on the walls and ceiling. He immediately clapped his hands over his ear; a horrible shrill music filled the air and smacked down on him like a wall of noise. He thought he heard something in it though, something familiar.

Carefully, slowly, he stood up. He was stark naked, but no one around him seemed to care or even notice. The people in the crowd ground and writhed against each other mindlessly, and as each beat of the music pulsed through him he felt himself beginning to slip into a trance. He would know that voice anywhere.

He spun around and sure enough, behind him was a low stage where the flesh curtains were performing. He grinned as a flutter of arousal washed over him, and pulled the rough denim vest off of someone nearby who was clearly off their ass on k-lax. Might as well enjoy himself while he was here.

He had no idea how much time he had, so he pushed roughly through the crowd towards the stairs that lead backstage. He had no plan, and no idea what to say, but he had a feeling that wouldn't exactly be necessary. He heard the closest groupies hissing his name as he left the showroom. All the staff he passed seemed to know him and let him by, even the huge guard. Someone with a headset rolled her eyes when she saw him, and wordlessly handed him a pair of pants that fit perfectly. He felt a warm rush of happiness in knowing he would find his way back here again at some point.

He barged into Rick's dressing room, ignoring the squishy purple aliens waiting outside of it that garbled indignantly as he shoved past them. There was an insane buzzing shaking through his skull and rattling his bones. He had prepared for this of course, Rick had coached him relentlessly about what to expect, but still hadn't been quite ready the surge of power and adrenaline that kicked in.

He was starting to crash fast, and he slumped down onto the nearest soft surface, a shitty old couch with stains he didn't want to think about. Staring up and the ceiling he let it wash over him, his vision kaleidoscoping like a particularly otherworldly acid trip.

Maybe it was hours later or only a few minutes, but suddenly a much younger Rick was staring down at him with eyesbrows practically at his hairline.

Morty could tell his eyes were crossing, but he still smiled and gave a weak thumbs up as he slurred his words out "fffffffffffirst Travel, Rick. Its'-it's-it's my very first one...and it br-brought me here. Wh-wherever the ffffuuuck here iss. Rick and Morty forever and ever, one hundred years Rick and Morty adventures, Travelin' ar-around allllll day forever"

He heard snorting, and the squeaky lid of Ricks flask unscrewing "I'm not go-gonna lie to you, to-to your face. Li-li-like, that was...that was leg-legitimately sueeUUrghper, super fucking weird, kid"

Morty has never felt more at home


End file.
